Alderin.com

I welded together a steel frame for the barbeque hood that is going in the outdoor kitchen.  Very odd concept: glue some metal together with more metal and a lot of electricity.  Who comes up with this stuff?

Some notes (to self and anyone else who happens to read and care):

• Make sure everything is lined up and secured with clamps or something before you weld.
• Clean the surfaces you plan to weld, it makes things much easier.
• Don’t overdo the caffeine before welding, it takes a steady hand.
• Don’t let anything get between the sensor on the automatic darkening visor and the arc. ( Ouch! )
• If you are blowing apart the metal, turn down the power.
• If you are blowing apart the wire, turn up the feed.

I’m thinking I need to do a site makeover on Alderin.com.  Partly because I think there needs to be better content categorization, partly because I want to exercise some rusty skills, partly because I’d like to be able to send anyone to the main page, without worrying about age or prejudice.  I’d like to rekindle the JavaScript pages that are dormant somewhere in the database, just realized that for some reason the link doesn’t work anymore.  I’d like to complete the JavaScript Games ‘class’, and build a Python class with a similar aim, then a Python class for doing Python scripts in Blender and it’s 3d game engine, and maybe extend that to building games with Blender + Crystal Space + CEL or CELStart.  Somewhere in all that I should build a primer/tutorial on the Gimp for image and texture creation.  Oh, yeah, and I need to show off some of my ridiculously complex accomplishments in JavaScript, things that people expect can only be done in Flash or Java.

A game section is in order.  Some touch-ups on a couple of games I’ve already written and make the section coherent, seamless, and expandable.

And I need to finish that Java chatbox applet I promised to some friends.

And I need to upgrade my Wordpress installation, which is what brings all this other stuff up to the forefront of my mind.  Funny how it somehow dropped to the end of the list, being the thing that started the train of thought.

Main points: Personal stuff, like me complaining about my job(s) or lack thereof, will be sequestered in a separate location, accessible but not “main content”.  Interesting stuff, like howtos, tutorials, tech reviews, projects and project progress, will get more of a spotlight.  Community promotion, like chat and forums and comments ( and maybe file sharing ( maybe ( maybe ) ) ), is planned to continue or expand.

But not right now, and likely not this week, and knowing me, I’ll do it such that I just have to “throw the switch” and *POOF*, the site is new.  No downtime or “under construction”.  I hate those.

*HUGS*

But not beyond edible, just not as good or as solid as previous batches.  Yeah, they are very crumby cookies, lol!

Found something interesting, not sure how it will pan out, if it will, etc, but the questions are kinda fun and, well, I’m willing to give it a shot.

“instantcashsweepstakes” http://instantcashsweepstakes.com/invitations/ref_link/7985

Otherwise, yes, I’m loads better than I was Sunday.  Getting the Ghia back together (finally) and I should have better information on my transfer+raise this afternoon.  Looking good!

Yay.  Except, of couse, now I have to work. lol

Other problems: it is currently minimum wage (in California, that’s $8/hour), though I am expecting a $6/hour raise as soon as my transfer goes through (a communications task for tomorrow), followed by a raise of unknown size once I get my CompTIA A+ certification (a test which they pay for, once).

Red tape and polytics are annoying, though.  It seems that the store manager in Palo Alto (Henry) doesn’t want to let me go to the Fremont store too quickly.  While I don’t mind working in the Palo Alto store, and a lot of people have already expressed that they will miss me (only been there a week!), $8/hour is not enough, and the longer I’m at that pay rate, the less I make… well, duh, sortof… I guess the point is that all I need to do to get a $6/hour raise is to switch stores and this manager is delaying that.  I don’t know his motives, but the effect on my finances is negative, and I can’t see how that is positive for him.

On a lighter note, I had a dream the other morning that I was at work… and that wasn’t a bad thing. lol  I’m working in a massive electronics store, in computer perhipherals, and helping people both figure out and find what they are looking for.  Instant gratitude from most people I help.  Point being that it isn’t a bad job, just currently bad pay.  But PAY is better than NO PAY… it just isn’t enough better to move forward with any other plans, and everyone is getting impatient for some of those to move forward.

That was supposed to be a lighter note. heh

Today has been a down day for me.  Missing people, missing stuff, failing and flailing at tasks and projects, fearing even attempts because, well, today felt like a day where I’d totally screw it all up.  I mean, you’ve had those days where you know, at the end of it, you should not have even left your bedroom, right?  My gut feeling today was going to be one of those, so instead of having a bad day and screwing things up and having to deal with the consequences of those screw-ups and failures, wishing I had waited a day, I just waited a day.

Though, now at the end of it, I feel like the day was wasted.  Figures.  I think I’ll grab some food and putter around with solitaire until I feel sleepy and plan on a high-energy happy successful day tomorrow.

Torn on whether or not to make some cookies for myself to help me feel better.  Shortbread cookies are too simple to really screw up, though I’m sure I could find a way.

If tomorrow turns out the way I hope, I’ll have to blog that, because this blog isn’t providing the positive energy resource I wanted it to be for other people.  I’ll have to fix that…

A surprising amount of kids were there, and I was pleasantly surprised to find programmers and network administrators around to talk to.  I’m invited to tonight’s game night, too, and even offered a carpool to shorten my trip or expense or something.  It is nice to meet friendly people, play new and interesting games, or old and interesting games, or relatively new but slightly modified games.

My only real issue is that I meshed better with the kids than the adults.  The three-year-old and the five-year-old playing hide and seek and both either asking me not to tell or to tell depending on which side they were on.  The girl tweens, well, I didn’t get through their angst shields, oh well.  The highschool kids (and slightly post-highschool)… yep, they love me.  Somehow I talk their language and play their games, plus have insight, creativity, and a sense of humor that is just right for highschool, it seems.

It was fun, but it made me miss my kids.  I want to add a modifier to that sentence, but the words in there are what the language calls for.  But this missing is a bone-depth ache from head-to-toe, like a phantom full-body migraine.  I’ve never been this far from them, or away for this long.  The saying is true, even if I bend it a little for this situation: You don’t know what you have until you don’t have it.

I guess that goes along with “Having is not so pleasurable a thing as wanting.  It is not logical, but is often true.”  I think that quote is attributed to Spock.

Humans are so plicomcated.

I guess that means I should be one of the happiest people in the world, as I am so full of want I could burst.

Anyway, I’ve gotta get back to code so I can make the project all better and the investor meeting tomorrow can run without a hitch and things will be smooth and good.

*HUGS*

Reflections:

2008 Saw some interesting times.  We went to the RenFair, we went to Disney World, I went from an $11/hour job to a $30/hour job on the other coast, then to no job for two months.  Now it looks like I’ll have 3 jobs in the next couple of weeks, and depending on just how much they want me to work, I just might be able to keep them all.

For a little while anyway, recover quickly from this not-so-little hiccup in income.

I am sad that this is the first year that I’ve been away from my kids for the holiday season since they were born.  We’ve had sparse Christmases, we’ve had good ones, but we were always together until this one.  If I weren’t totally convinced that the family really belongs out here, I would have gone back already.  This separation is really tough for me.

I am now, officially, a Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP).  If I understand the scoring system correctly, I got a 96.6%, needing only 70% to pass.  So, I got an ‘A’ by all grading scales I’ve worked under.  One more and I’ll have a full specification: Microsoft Certified Desktop Support Technician.  Not planning on stopping there, but I am planning on pushing out resumés once I’m at that point.  I’ll update my current resumé with the MCP tag once it is publicly verifiable.

Of course, being who I am, I can’t help but to recall the main antagonist in the movie Tron: the Master Control Program (MCP).  You know, the evil program that consumed other programs’ functions to make them it’s own, taking over the entire system, disreguarding protocols and standards, bringing the system to a slow crawl, usurping system resources, micromanaging user access, and playing games with people’s livelihood.

Wow, Microsoft IS the MCP!!! lol

I guess my avatar’s circuits are turning red now. lol (Don’t get it?  Go watch Tron)

Anyway, I have bright hopes for the new year, I even have bright hopes for January.  I hope all my readers, friends and family, have a better year in 2009 than they had in 2008, no matter how bad or good 2008 was to you!

Lots of love to all of you from my corner of the world.

*HUGS*

I finally got a call back from one of the myriad of places I’ve applied to and sent resumés to.  Technically it is a temporary position, but it is a two-year contract.  That really doesn’t sound so temporary to me.  It is also working in an Internet Tech Support Callcenter, which, for me, is totally awesome.  I just wish the pay was higher, but who doesn’t?  And it is more than I was making in Florida, plus they said overtime is available, so with a little extra effort I could totally make bank.

But, not resting, I also went with a local friend to Frys, since he knows the managers at a couple of those.  Unfortunately, the one I really wanted to work at isn’t hiring right now.  Would have been nice because it is on the commute route my mom takes so carpooling would be available (if the hours were matched up right).  But the manager did say that for some reason the Palo Alto store seems to always need people, and that is near the CalTrain commuter train line.  After a couple paychecks commuting on the train won’t be a problem at all because I can get a nicer battery for my laptop.

Otherwise the studying for the Microsoft Certification test I have next Monday (Xmas gift, thanks Mom!) is going well.  Of course, it’s boring stuff because I already know it due to doing it for most of my life, it’s just educating myself on how they think it should be done, and all the little extras that seem to get put into tests that don’t actually matter to the actual knowledge of the material.  Yeah, sorry, still bitter and disillusioned with an education/testing system that doesn’t actually prepare you for utilizing the knowledge, but that isn’t preventing me from dealing with it.

Got a few projects to work on.  Thunderbird plugin, the pool wiring, studying, my car, my carputer, java chatbox, and somewhere in there I need to eat and sleep. lol

Off topic note: Floofen ( or Flüfen, or the Flüfenator of Doooom ) had some more bad teeth of his removed today, so hopefully he won’t be such a cranky kitty anymore.

Off to try to check things off the list.

*HUGS*

Yeah, I realize it’s been nearly a month since the last post.  And I had been doing so well with regular updates.  But in my defense, less newsworthy stuff has been happening lately. The big news is that my wife had her hysterectomy and recovered more quickly than expected, and feels much better than before the operation! So, big happy dance there.

On the job front, well, it’s December.  Big places are likely waiting until after the first of the year, smaller places are getting hit with less shopping from people having a sparse holiday season.  I’ve had three jobs I’ve applied for be closed without being filled.  And I think it should be illegal to not hire someone because they are “overqualified”.

I’ve got pieces of engine all over the Ghia barn, but I have the tools and knowledge enough that I am confident that I can get it running again.  It certainly needed a lot of cleaning, but I still wish I had the additional tools to at least redo the valves/valve springs/pushrods.  It’s not required, but it would be nice.

The other day my brain got caught in a loop after seeing somebody built a home made pipe organ on YouTube.  I’ve always been curious as to how pipes and flutes and such actually work, so I went through a research moment and wound up out in the shop making a pipe/whistle out of a piece of scrap copper plumbing and a little piece of leftover dowel that I turned down on the lathe to fit.  I actually got it to work!  It sounds… absolutely horrible, but it makes a sound and I am sure it could be tuned.  A different guy on YouTube made a tiny pipe organ out of pens and a two-by-four.  I think I’m aiming somewhere in between those, but I really can’t do more until there is income.

I’m applying to 6-10 jobs per day, and usually after that, I really don’t want to stare at the computer screen for a while.  Blogging has taken a back seat.

But I am going to try to revive the habit of blogging regularly.  I think it is a good idea.

*HUGS*

It is difficult to maintain a positive attitude during a job search campain where I’ve sent out at least 50 resumes to places ranging from Best Buy’s Geek Squad to Lucasfilm, from YouTube to Central Computers (local computer repair/support/sales store started in the mid 80s).  I mean, big places and little places, and the two calls I’ve had so far are one “Overqualified” and one “position has been cut”.

But, for the most part, I’ve been succeeding at keeping a positive and hopeful attitude.  Sometimes my grip on my attitude slips, and those are times when it is really handy to have my mom around to help re-align my thoughtflow.

I mean, really, if I were in a negative mindset, would I even consider applying at Lucasfilm?

Other than jobhunting, I haven’t put a great deal of effort toward any of my other projects.  I read a chapter of my Java book as a refresher, thinking maybe I could pull in some quick cash through contract programming.  I have yet to put the car’s engine back together, but the spark plug hole is fixed and I have the gaskets.  The plan is, while I’ve got the engine this far apart, and the gasket kit was for the whole engine, I might as well take off the other head and clean it, too.

Talked with a guy yesterday who’s friend drives a 1972 VW Beetle, gets 42mpg.  Properly tuned and running smooth, that’s about what I can expect from my Ghia.  That’s pretty exciting.

New pergola is framed, some plumbing projects have been completed, more to be done for mom’s surgery recovery time.

…and I’m tired and need sleep.

*HUGS*

Sorry so long between updates, been a busy time with the jobhunting and the coast bouncing.

My wife had a hysterectomy this past Wednesday, so I spent Saturday through Saturday in Florida (or aboard a plane) and helped with the toughest first days of her post-op recovery.  The surgeon was able to keep the procedure laproscopic, which is much better than the big-slice alternative, and the recovery expectations are positive and likely to be on the shorter side of the often quoted “4 to 6 weeks”.

I started a couple projects with the kids, but didn’t have the time or energy to finish them.  I’m kinda sad about that, and I really miss them.  I can’t wait until I get everything together and have us all in a nice house in this wonderful area.  For that I need income.

Today we went sailing with Lew Rubens and Sabrina Fox.  Excellently awesome people, had lots of fun, networked, and might (maybe) end up having a good amount of Internet/Webpage work lined up through them.  I’m hopeful, but as may be obvious by the way I phrased that, I’m sadly resigned to the likelihood that I misread things or I’m putting too much stock in the situation and will, again, fail.

…

I’m not depressed, I’m excitedly looking for new opportunities and new friends.  It’s just that, what past experience tells me, is that pessimism is realism more often than optimists want to admit.  What feels strange about that realization is that it doesn’t fill me with dread or sorrow, because I’m an optimist betting that I’ll beat the odds through sheer tenacity.

But each time I come to an obstacle, I don’t expect to succeed, I expect to fail, at least once, likely more, and the hope is that I’ll figure it out and either get through it or around it before, like a fly at the window, I bash my own head in.

Flies are optimists, too.

I will succeed sooner or later.  My hope is sooner.

*HUGS*

Shameless plug: Need your own blog/website/wiki?  Drop a comment, we’ll talk.

Well, I’m making headway in getting resumes out.  I’m starting to develop a flow: find job, read about job, find company, read about company, customize resume, send, record.  That last step means put the company contact info and notes into a spreadsheet, which I’ve forgotten to do more than once.  I should fix that in the morning by pulling up sent e-mails.

I figure that putting my resume up here can’t hurt, so if you want to take a look, here it is.

The strange thing about jobhunting out here are the names that are possibilities to send resumes to, like Yahoo and Google and eBay.

Other news, I’ve got the engine out of the Ghia again, so that I can pull off the left head to tap out the sparkplug hole and put in the new sparkplug with the new threads.  Then I get to debug the fuel system, but that might be as simple as “put gas in it, stupid.”  Won’t bother trying to find out until I’ve got the engine back in.

No, the fuel guage doesn’t work.

Trivia: The original Kharmann Ghias sold did not have a fuel guage, they had a reserve tank.  When the engine died because the main tank ran out, you’d just flip a switch to the reserve tank and start it back up.  Hilariously non-user-friendly for today’s market, but in the mid 50s, I guess it wasn’t a big deal.

But mine has a fuel guage, it just doesn’t do anything.  I’ll figure that out later.

My kids want to build a really nice “playhouse”.  They’ve worked together to identify the problems, I helped them with some basic information and direction, like using graph paper for technical drawings, using 1 square equals 1 foot scale, etc.  And I told them that even though we all know that we can’t start this project, we CAN plan, we can design, and we can put it on paper for when we have the ability to actually DO it.  I encouraged them to think, design, and draw and re-draw their ideas until someone else could look at the paper and know exactly what they meant.

Worst case, it ends up being a really really nice shed/workshop for someone down the line.

I miss my kids.

I miss my spice.

I miss paychecks (and I’ve only missed one at this point).

All that will be solved, though.  Soon I’ll spend a week with them all, and then soon after that we’ll be happily househunting in the bay area without a care in the world.

*HUGS*